


My Hardware is Bigger Than Your Hardware

by d2fmeasurement



Category: Silicon Valley (TV)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-31
Updated: 2015-07-31
Packaged: 2018-04-12 04:11:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,629
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4465001
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/d2fmeasurement/pseuds/d2fmeasurement
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>High school AU where Dinesh and Gilfoyle form competing computer clubs.</p>
            </blockquote>





	My Hardware is Bigger Than Your Hardware

Dinesh had just moved to Palo Alto. He hadn’t made any friends yet. At least in Islamabad there were enough people he’d known his whole life who had to be polite to him for him to convince himself he was popular.

  
He went to his guidance counselor to get a list of possible clubs to join and was immediately drawn to computer club. He’d impress those people with his intelligence and once again be part of a clique.

  
He walked into the computer room and wrinkled up his nose. It smelled like Wajeed’s basement. He looked around, wondering if he had the right place. There were several computers but none of them were turned on. In the corner, he saw a guy in big Buddy Holly glasses, with shaggy hair, torn up skinny jeans and a t-shirt that said BUZZCOCKS. Dinesh stared at it, trying to decipher what those words could mean together and how this guy was allowed to wear that to school.

  
The guy squinted at him. Dinesh turned the lights on and the guy said, “Hey, whoa, ew. Fluorescents lights. What the fuck, man?” As he spoke, he hastily threw something in the trash.

  
Dinesh frowned and asked, “Are you smoking a marijuana cigarette?”

  
“I don’t know. Are you using the phrase ‘marijuana cigarette’ in the year 2005?”

  
Dinesh rolled his eyes and said, “Get out of here. Computer club is meeting.”

  
“I am computer club,” he said.

  
Dinesh stared at him.

  
He put out his hand and said, “Bertram Gilfoyle. Founder, President, sole member.”

  
“Shouldn’t you be...” Dinesh looked over at the computers.

  
Gilfoyle sighed. “Look, I started this club as a freshman when my mom said I had to join something. I knew no one would be a big enough loser to join a computer club, so I’d be able to hang out doing whatever I want for an hour after school every week and still put President of the Computer Club on my college applications. I’m happy. My mom’s happy. The only downside is that my mom’s happy.”

  
“Well, I’m going to have to tell on you,” Dinesh said.

  
“Tell on me?” Gilfoyle repeated. “So you don’t just dress like an uptight elementary school kid on school picture day, you act like one too?”

  
“What’s wrong with the way I dress?” Dinesh asked, tugging on his collar. Before Gilfoyle could answer that, he crossed his arms and said, “At least I don’t wear ladies’ jeans.”

  
Gilfoyle snorted. “Just be cool and don’t tell the advisor about this club thing.”

  
“Some people are actually interested in computers,” Dinesh said. “I want to learn and do things with other kids. Not sit around smoking my future away. I know you wouldn’t know what it’s like to actually develop a skill--”

  
Gilfoyle clenched his jaw and said, “Yeah. You got me. Do what you want.”

 

 

 

The next day, Gilfoyle was unsurprised when the advisor of the computer club actually showed up after school, along with Dinesh.

  
“Bertram, Dinesh has informed me that your club hasn’t been recruiting new members,” Mrs. Hanford said.

  
Gilfoyle shrugged and said, “No one’s interested.”

  
“Well, Dinesh tried to join,” she pointed out.

  
“He wasn’t up to my standards,” Gilfoyle said. “If I have to explain every little thing about how to build hardware to someone, it inhibits my growth. I can’t work with him.”

  
Dinesh glared and asked, “You can’t work with me? I can’t work with you!”

  
“So, you’re agreed you can’t be a part of Bertram’s club?” Mrs. Hanford repeated.

  
Gilfoyle smirked. Dinesh frowned. “No. I--” He groaned. “Can’t you kick him out?”

  
“I’ve been loyally going to meetings of this club for years,” Gilfoyle pointed out. “Only to be kicked out of the club I founded? That’s a pretty terrible system.”

  
Dinesh could see that Mrs. Hanford was nodding, seeing Gilfoyle’s points. He blurted out, “Okay, how about a competition?”

  
Gilfoyle smiled slightly. “What?”

  
“We both try to recruit a couple members and whoever can build the best thing gets to be the leader of the true legitimate computer club,” Dinesh said.

  
Gilfoyle grinned and said, “That sounds fine with me.”

 

 

Out in the hall, after they’d worked out the details, Dinesh narrowed his eyes at Gilfoyle. “I don’t know what you think, but you can’t just learn this stuff over a weekend and fake it.”

  
“I know,” Gilfoyle said. “See you soon.”

 

 

 

Gilfoyle knew that Erlich knew how to code because they’d actually been kind of close in elementary school. These days Erlich didn’t hang out with Gilfoyle anymore and preferred to hover near the jocks, actively ignoring any social cues they might be sending his way.

  
Gilfoyle approached him and asked, “Hey, can I talk to you?”  Erlich loudly said, “Yeah, sure, I can talk to you about our class assignment. Purely school stuff.”

  
When they were alone, Erlich glared and said, “Could you please not talk to me in front of my friends?”

  
Gilfoyle knew he should let that go, but he couldn’t help but ask, “Friends?”

  
“Yes,” Erlich repeated, oblivious, at least on the surface.

  
“Whatever,” Gilfoyle said. “I need you to join computer club.” When he saw Erlich’s look, he said, “No one will ever know. We just need to build one great system to prove we can and then after that we can hang out smoking weed or whatever we want.”

  
Erlich slowly smiled and said, “Sir, what you just said is everything I stand for in life.”

 

 

 

Dinesh was sitting in his required typing class, bored. He looked over and noticed two guys who seemed to be coding. He went over to them and said, “Hey...what are you doing?” 

 

“Nothing!” one said. He tried to minimize the tab and ended up closing out of it.

  
“Big Head, that was an entire period’s work!” his friend said.

  
“Sorry, man. I panicked. I don’t want to get caught and have to go back to just typing all period,” he said.

  
“You guys code?” Dinesh asked.

  
“Yeah,” Big Head said. “I’m Big Head. This is Richard.”

  
“Your name is Big Head?” Dinesh repeated.

  
“Yeah,” he said with a shrug. Dinesh waited for him to explain but he didn’t.

  
“Okay, anyway,” Dinesh said. “I need to form a computer club to compete against Gilfoyle’s computer club. It shouldn’t be too hard.”

  
“You want to compete against Gilfoyle?” Big Head asked, looking at Richard with concern.

  
“Yeah, that weird loser who hang out here after school,” Dinesh said.

  
“That could be pretty tough,” Big Head said. “We used to hang out when we were kids. He built a computer when he was eight that was fucking awesome.”

  
“From a kit?” Dinesh asked.

  
He frowned at the way Big Head was looking at him after that question.

  
“We’ll help you,” Richard told him. “All of us together can be beat him.”

 

 

 

Gilfoyle was hanging out with his friends after school, getting high and watching Degrassi. He gently approached the subject of the computer club. “So, there’s this thing I do after school. I call it computer club but it’s totally fake. I don’t care about computers or whatever at all, but it gets my mom off my back about activities. Anyway, I need another member. Does anyone wanna join? You don’t have to do anything. Me and this other guy are just gonna, like, throw this random number generator together or whatever. You can hang out while we do it.”

  
“I want nachos,” his friend Carla chimed in. “Gilfoyle, come to the kitchen and help me make them.”

  
When they were in the kitchen, Carla looked up at him and said, “You totally fucking love computers, don’t you?”

  
“What? No,” Gilfoyle said. “I use them for porn and to find bands on MySpace but that’s, like, it.”

  
“You’re building a random number generator?” she said. “You’re either in way over your head or you know what you’re doing. If it’s the second one, I want in.”

  
“...seriously?” he asked.

  
“Yeah,” she said. “I built my own computer when I was ten.”

  
“From a kit?” he asked.

  
She looked at him with disdain and asked, “Is that a real question?”

  
He grinned at her affectionately.

 

 

“These are both very impressive!” Mrs. Hanford said.

  
“Thank you,” Dinesh said.

  
At the same time, Gilfoyle flatly said, “I know.”

  
“Both teams did so great, I don’t know which one to pick,” she said.

  
Dinesh looked over at Gilfoyle’s random number generator admiringly. “Maybe you don’t have to pick,” he said. He turned to Gilfoyle and said, “We could all work together...right?”

  
“I don’t know. You want to actually develop a skill. I wouldn’t know anything about that,” Gilfoyle said, narrowing his eyes at him.

  
Dinesh sighed.

  
Carla rolled her eyes at Gilfoyle and then said, “We can all work together.”

  
“No, we can’t!” Gilfoyle said.

  
Carla tugged on Gilfoyle’s thermal, trying to get him to bend down so she could whisper in his ear. Gilfoyle did. She whispered, “That nerd has been checking you out ever since he saw the shit we made. If you keep building shit around him, I definitely think he’d let you hit it.”

  
Gilfoyle straightened up and said, “Fine. We can form one club.”

  
“Great!” Mrs. Hanford said.

 

 

Their first meeting actually went pretty smoothly. Now that they were done competing with each other, they all had some cool ideas for things to do together.

  
As everyone was walking away at the end of the meeting, Dinesh asked Carla, “What did you say to convince Gilfoyle to form one club?”

  
“I said that if you two spent enough time together you’d end up fucking,” she said.

  
Dinesh stared at her, wide-eyed.

  
“I’m totally fucking with you,” she told him, smirking as she turned away.


End file.
